Stone 12th Anniversary Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout

Formerly brewed at Stone Brewing Co.
Style: Imperial Stout
Escondido, California USA

Very dark brown. Roasty and burnt dark fruits on the nose - even more so than in the Zywiec I just had. There is a nice nuttiness to this nose as well, from the oatmeal. Very oaty body. Rich chocolate taste with a hint of roast, slight burnt fruit. This really cuts between your typical low-grav oatmeal stout and a top-fermented Baltic porter.

2009-06-12, blind tasting at Papsø’s, 7-4-8-4-16=39
Black color; medium head. Light aroma of roasted malt and alcohol, very light wood. Good body strength and round mouthfeel, strong chocolate and roasted malt flavor, inky salty, with strong bitterness and nice alcohol warmth. Very solid, good.

2008-09-09, draught at the Freakin’ Frog, Las Vegas, 6-3-7-3-14=33
Black color. Poor aroma, light roasted malt and chocolate. The mouthfeel is quite soft, with mild coffee flavor, chocolate; difficult to detect oatmeal characteristics. Side-to-side with a Drake’s Imperial Stout and Deschutes Imperial Porter, this is by far the least interesting.

Black with tiny beige head. Sweet aroma with roasted malt, caramel and chocolate notes. Sweet flavor with roasted malt, coffee, chocolate and woody notes.

(22oz bottle) Smallish brown head atop brown-black body. Aroma is medium sweet, dark chocolate, some milk chocolate, roast, light coffee liqueur. Taste is moderately sweet, milk chocolate, burnt coffee, alcohol, some dark chocolate, roast. Smooth medium-full body. Alcohol presence detracts from what otherwise would be a very enjoyable beer.

Cask at GBBF 08. Black, thin tan head. Lots of bitter choc, some nutmeg. Still some American hops on end. It’s quite strong on the alcohol, bit of vanilla, bit too unsubtle. Hot alcohol and some whiskyish nature to it.

From the Jug at the GABF Colorado Convention Center, Denver 10/10/2008 Roast aroma. Beige head. Black strong in alcohol and rich on the palate with a crisp and bitter lasting chocolate roast finish.

Courtesy of After4ever, thanks Tom! It is pitch black with a nougat colored, creamy head. The aroma has notes of roasted malt, ash, chocolate, light smoke, wood and it is funny, but I can smell the bitterness. The flavour has a roasted and hoppy bitterness, notes of roasted malt, wood, bitter chocolate, light sweetness and coffee and a hint of ashes. It is at the same time both very bitter and yet smooth, complex and yet straight forward, and interesting mix.

A Sim rate (gravity cask at GBBF): This beer was the opposite of the old phrase "It does what it says on the tin". It was the anti-thesis of what it said on the tin. Reading "bitter chocolate oatmeal stout", I was convinced this would be my beer of the festival and I b-lined straight to it upon entering, but must admit, I was a bit let-down. Bitter, chocolate, oatmeal it wasn’t. And certainly not hefty enough to be called stout. Aroma of excessive alcohol, whiskey, oil. It’s good, but almost wrong in combination. Oily appearance for some reason. I quite like that. Flavour is good, but just way too alcoholic and oily (again) to be great. No oatmeal in it. And lacking that grainy texture in the palate that usually makes oatmeal stouts so outstanding. It slips down the throat like vegetable oil.. certainly not like stout. I quite enjoyed it to drink, but the whole was not made up of the sum of its slightly-lacking parts.